Our favorite stories and photos of 2012

‘Tis the season for end-of-the-year lists (and for bad “‘Tis the season” leads). I love a good list, so I asked Herald writers and photographers what they thought was the best work they did in the past year. Here are their nominees:

• Mulligan teamed with his wife, Annie, and reporter Debra Smith on “The Last Smokestack,” a terrific series about the loss of the Kimberly-Clark mill and the jobs people have relied on for so many years.

• Reporter Bill Sheets chose this story about an unpleasant side-effect of the mill’s closure: the fact that we now confront a toxic mess on Everett’s waterfront.

• Reporter Diana Hefley chose this story about a program that pairs artists with kids being supervised by the county’s drug court. It’s a connection that’s making a huge difference in the lives of young people.

• Haglund and Scott North both pointed to this story about County Executive Aaron Reardon’s use of public resources to raise campaign money. This story was the result of months of investigative work.

• Features writer Theresa Goffredo picked a whole series — “The Grid.” This was a fun set of stories about the names of Everett’s downtown streets and the history behind them. Great reading for local history buffs like me.

• In another trip back in time, reporter Alejandro Dominguez wrote about daredevil Al Faussett, who went over Sunset Falls on the Skykomish River in 1926 and lived to tell the tale.

• Reporter Rikki King chose this story about Gary Parks, a firefighter who died in an unsolved arson at Everett Community College 25 years ago, and the memories he left behind.

• Reporter Gale Fiege chose her story about the MusicBox project, which documents the stories and songs of women who perform traditional American music. Lots of great photos and videos with her story.

• Julie Muhlstein struck a chord with a lot of people when she wrote about the demise of the distinctive glass murals at Clyde Revord Motors in Everett. We lost a local landmark for the sake of corporate branding. Muhlstein also pointed to her June column about Helen Jackson, written after Jackson’s family disclosed she has Alzheimer’s disease.

• This story by Katie Murdoch is one a lot of people found really inspirational. It’s about David Quinn, a former child actor who was inspired by AIDS patient Ryan White in the 1980s, became a multimillionaire and then an Edmonds teacher.

• Photographer Dan Bates’ favorite work came from teaming up with Jim Haley on our two-part series, “The Forest.” Bates took some other-worldly photos of the inhabitants of an old-growth forest near Arlington.

• Sports reporter David Krueger went to great depths to get his story about learning to swim from the experts on the Cascade High School swimming team. We have video to document that this really happened.